Lobbying for Lobby Music
I think one of the principal benefits of owning a business is that, at a certain level of success, you get to have a building with a lobby, and playing in this lobby is music you chose. I enjoy a good lobby; they are the architectural appetizer, anticipation incarnate. But music is an important ingredient for all this, and sets the theme for the whole professional experience up ahead whether you are a client or employee.
I can only think of a handful of lobbies whose music I truly liked, and even those I feel were by accident, but they sent chills down my spine. I remember setting foot in the rarified air of the lobby of Hong Kong’s Ritz-Carlton just as the piano chords of Air’s “La Femme d’Argent” started playing and the skyline across Victoria Harbour rose into view. It is a vision that stays with me. When I returned, they had reverted to more anodyne piped music, but the scene had been filmed and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Still, you can skirt around the corporate tendency to play it safe by having a sort of soundtrack in mind as you go about your day. This is probably the biggest advantage of the otherwise anti-social invention of headphones; they allow you have something interesting accompanying a scene. But I do think we should generously trust creators of public places, and go headphones-free the first few times until thoroughly disappointed. I have met some of my favorite artists when I least wanted to, thanks to good ambient music.
It used to be that every man had his own lobby with his own music in his own corner of the internet, and it was called MySpace and Xanga, and strange music assailed you everywhere. Time was, you could force anyone visiting your profile to listen to any song of your choice, alongside a whole host of quirks which made it so only those who loved you could stand to read you. But before you read anything, you knew something about the writer thanks to his music of choice, and there was something helpful in all that which a profile picture or cover photo doesn’t quite capture. We often disguise our appearance, but we are less likely to disguise our preferences. If Elon Musk really wishes to improve the world, he would mandate this feature for individual Twitter profiles. This should not be free; if folks really wish to enjoy the sterilized version of Twitter sans music, they should have to buy one of those subscriptions so essential to Twitter’s survival. I think I am onto something, here.
At any rate, here is the song I would have forced you to listen to if this was a freer, younger internet. I listen to it frequently on BART and things seem a great deal more cheerful.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson
